


worlds above and beyond you

by cloudtalking



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Trans Jeremy Knox, Transphobic parent, magic but in the weird omnipresent celtic way, merm au, misgendering/deadnaming, nb jean moreau
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 18:49:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15395163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudtalking/pseuds/cloudtalking
Summary: jeremy knox is eleven years old the first time his family changes their vacation plans from visiting his father’s relatives in san juan to spending the summer with his mom’s family. they’re from france, a place that jeremy has never even thought of as more than hogwarts-adjacent, and he is very quick to realize that the world is both more and less than what he believed it to be.





	worlds above and beyond you

**Author's Note:**

> asrtvv ik im putting this up the last possible day but pls enjoy!!!!

I.

 

jeremy knox is eleven years old the first time his family changes their vacation plans from visiting his father’s relatives in san juan to spending the summer with his mom’s family. they’re from france, a place that jeremy has never even thought of as more than hogwarts-adjacent, and he is very quick to realize that the world is both more and less than what he believed it to be.

 

more, because now that jeremy is leaving he can almost believe it exists; there’s solar systems with different foci, galaxies and universes outside of his own. he likes his stars the best— his moons, his suns, his orbits— but most of all he loves his earth. he loves his forests for the ease that he can follow his own footsteps in the dirt, loves his beaches for the rocks he’s carved his name into, loves his skies for the sunsets he can whisper the names of. 

 

less, because when he does imagine the world, he imagines it out of reach. he has always been content with this, because all he’s ever wanted is the same as all he has. he wants to be loved and he is, he wants to love in return and he does; the simplicity of his own life being in the sheer happiness he finds in it. now that he knows the world is in his grasp, everything is so much smaller. why stop at france? why not japan? why not the moon? stars are in his hands, in his eyes, in his heart— why should he stop at all? 

 

he doesn’t think he needs to, now. he can have everything he never knew to want, and it feels like magic in his mind. of course, magic, if you truly believe, is as real as anything else.

 

less, because jeremy stays up late at night with words in his head written in neither of the languages he speaks. less, because his papa does the same, and hot chocolate is a helpful tool for translating each other’s scriptures.

 

“there is dirt in france,  _ mi hijo _ , and it is the same dirt you’ve walked on before. all oceans are the same ocean, all rocks are from the same core, all skies have the same sun. you already own the world, take it in your hands.”

 

jeremy bites his lip, anger and frustration bubbling up under his skin. that is not the answer he wants. he wants the world to be more than just his stars and his suns. he wants new earths to love, and new people inside of them. he fears the unknown, but what is fear but anticipation? he wants to drown in an ocean he has yet to meet, burn in a sun unfamiliar to him. 

 

his father takes him to his office, cluttered with Adult Things jeremy has yet to understand, numbers and barcodes he’s not yet equipped to deal with on his own. there are books of every size and color, drawings from both him and every one of his siblings tacked up on the wall, and next to that, a map. 

 

jeremy stands on his father’s chair, ceasing in his spinning only to watch as the man points at a place oceans away (and why is it ocean _ s _ , if they’re so the same? why must the world contradict itself?).  

 

jeremy squints. “marseilles?” his father shakes his head at the pronunciation;  _ mar•sa•yees. _

 

“try again.”

 

“marseilles,” he says, phonetics of his second language sliding off of his tongue. it isn’t quite right either, even more uncertain than the first attempt;  _ mar•sa•lees. _

 

“marseilles,” his father corrects, and jeremy is floored.

 

“what the— that can’t be right.”

 

“you said you wanted something new,” his father says. “this is your uncharted territory; you have all summer to figure out french.”

 

jeremy wants to protest, because these are still his letters and his words, but his alphabet never shakes his foundations like this. 

 

if he can’t have a new world, he can make one out of new tongues and new people. he can greet his skies with new weights on his mouth and teach himself to be satisfied with just that.

 

he falls asleep on his father’s office chair and dreams of galaxies undiscovered— planets where every sky has its own stars and every ocean is its own self. his nightmares are claustrophobic, but peaceful nights show him freedom in uncharted territory, and he has never been afraid of new beginnings.

 

II.

 

jeremy knox is eleven and he now thoroughly understands the meaning of underwhelmed. france is beautiful, but it isn’t new. puerto rico at least has the grace to be tropical when he visits; biodiversity promising him more than enough newness to keep him satisfied. 

 

france is actually quite old; made of dead secrets and dead bodies and dead kings. bones build the cities and haunt the pavement, whispering tales of lost religion and revolution. jeremy isn’t a fan of dancing on graves, but every square inch of the country has stories buried beneath it.

 

when his father reminds him of their late night conversations, pointing out the similarities between his home and this unmarked tomb, jeremy can’t help but think he’s fantastically off the mark.

 

earth is earth no matter where it forms, but it is nurture and not nature that defines it, and this earth is raised to hold blood. 

 

nevertheless, jeremy wants something  _ new _ , not a country of shades and forgotten history. anything here of note can also be found in any library or museum. nothing is unique to itself.

 

the language is pretty cool though.

 

it isn’t that jeremy can understand the intricacies of why the words are the way the are, know the fallen empires and small fires of civilization that preserved the tongues, make the connection of this language to the rest of his romances. it’s that he pays attention to every sign and every speaker, watches the way their mouths curve around vowels and how they dance around his ears. it sounds like running water, wind, gravity. it’s as natural as any of the three, and that much makes it special, because this force of nature is only so welcome here.

 

jeremy resolves to learn some, if only to greet the oceans in their own language— that’s the polite thing to do, after all.

 

III. 

 

jeremy feels like he should be more excited about meeting his mother’s family than going to the beach, even for all it turns out the opposite is true. 

 

auntie m is nice, but her main appeal is in how she speaks without prompting, and in how nice her accent sounds. his siblings like her for the homemade iced cream, but he’s lactose intolerant and is carefully policed by an older sister who doesnt want to hear him complain later and three younger brothers who want very much not to share.

 

her children are nice too, but there is only two of them and five knox children, and the others get to their cousins first.

 

so: the beach. it might not belong to a new ocean, but it in itself is a new animal, and that will have to be enough for jeremy.

 

auntie m lives close enough to the shore that jeremy can ride over on his cousin’s bike in almost no time at all. it’s still a touch too long for his mom, who would really rather not let him go off on his own in a foreign country at all. 

 

jeremy doesn’t understand why; if everything is the same then she shouldn’t have any any reason to worry. the same winds will protect him, the same ocean will defend him, the same sands will swallow any evildoers whole.

 

his mom shakes her head, as if he doesn’t get it, and doesn’t give him permission to go. it doesn’t matter much to him whether she permits him to or not, really, he’ll just owe the wind a favor for carrying away any noise he might make while he slips outside.

 

“mia,” she says as she wishes him goodnight. “you need to give up your fantasies.”

 

“it’s jeremy,” he corrects, and she sighs.

 

“you’re eleven years old,  _ mon petite.  _ when we go home, you’ll be my daughter again,  _ oui _ ?”

 

jeremy turns over in his borrowed bed and pointedly doesn’t respond. it’s better to have plausible deniability to deny outright; if olivia knox started shouting, there was no way he could win, forces of nature besides.

 

he’s gone before the sun rises, and back before it too. spending the night with an ocean that has yet to know his name is far better than spending it in the same house as a mother who calls him the wrong one.

 

IV.

 

_ “je m'appelle jeremy knox.”  _

 

the ocean rolls and toils in response, midnight water spewing foam onto the sand by jeremy’s toes. he sits, arms wrapped around his knees, chin nestled between them, getting to know an ocean that might already know him. he runs out of french fast, for all that he tries. he has yet to translate the tongues of his secrets, and secrets are all he has to share. 

 

he ends up switching to spanish— his mom isn’t nearly as good at it as he is, and his father and siblings are safe should they somehow overhear. he tells the waves about sunrises in texas and san juan, about kind breezes in the summer and knives in his throat in the cold. he whispers old deals and old secrets, as well as ones he’s overheard from the old bones in the infrastructure. then, he muffles his mouth behind his knees and speaks of fears.

 

“my mom wants me to be her daughter and not her son. if i go back home, she’ll make sure jeremy dies.”

 

the ocean responds with more crashing waves, because for all his jeremy’s new friend likes to chat, they don’t have a mouth.

 

he buries his head further into his knees. “i don’t want to be mia.”

 

V.

 

every day jeremy spends in france is another inch the walls around him close. it makes his rib cage burn, with the hours he spends binding the skin around it. he doesn’t have a proper way to go about it— not yet, not while he’s still mostly flat-chested and undeveloped, but he has bandages and sports bras for days. 

 

he knows he shouldn’t, but he’s running out of hours to live and air to breathe. why not be bruised and be jeremy when he soon won’t have the choice to be either?

 

when his mom calls him by his name now, it’s the right one, but it’s so sickly sweet and plastic that he almost wishes he had no name at all. 

 

his father calls him by his name with honest eyes, his siblings call him their brother when they call for him at all. it’s six against one, but the moment his mother says he’s mia he will be in their eyes; whether out of fear of the consequences of disagreement or genuine belief.

 

he can’t be jeremy behind closed doors, not when the knox family spends all their time in shared spaces. names have power, and the ones he might be called have the power to decide whether he lives or dies. 

 

every night jeremy spends in france is spent on the shore, sharing secrets or discovering new ones in the sands. 

 

he sits on the rocks now, hovering dangerously above the glassy waters. 

 

“i’ll stay forever, if you can save me,” he promises. “if i can be jeremy, i’ll never leave your side.”

 

the ocean splashes against the rocks, but comes back hard enough to knock him off. 

 

jeremy lies there, elbows in the land holding his face above water, pajamas an impressive demonstration of capillarity, and grins against the salt. 

 

VI.

 

the next time jeremy visits the ocean, there’s a face by the rocks.

 

_ “ _ who are you?”  jeremy asks, before he remembers this is france, and they ask for names very differently here.

 

“jean,” says the face, despite the supposed language barrier, and suddenly they have a torso and arms as well, rising out of the water.

 

_ “je m'appelle jeremy knox.”  _  jeremy says proudly, though they are proven to understand him no matter if he speaks in french or not.

 

“i know,” jean replies. “you told me ages ago.”

 

“oh.” jeremy isn’t so sure he did. jean has the prettiest face he’s ever seen, and that’s memorable enough for him to be doubtful.

 

“i hope you aren’t this forgetful all of the time,” jean continues. “the deal still holds whether you know you made it or not; i’d hate to be the one to break the news that you can’t leave.”

 

“oh!” jeremy grins, sunshine against the starlight. “you’re the ocean!”

 

“so you so remember, that’s good.” jean nods. “i had to make a mouth for you to understand me. forever needs to start with apt communication.”

 

“it’s a very pretty mouth,” jeremy tells them, watching their moon-pale skin turn red.  “wait— are you all oceans, or just this one?”

 

“I am the mouthpiece of the water before you, but i have many siblings.” 

 

“lit,” jeremy breathes, eyes wide and shining. 

 

jean leans back, revealing black scales, glowing with the possibility of colors. “come with me, so forever can start.”

 

“do i get to say goodbye first?”

 

jean nods. “as long as you come back by sundown, yeah. but if you don’t, you have to go to your slaughter.”

 

“that’s fair,” jeremy says, because it’s more than. if jean is a friend enough to allow this, they are a friend enough for him to look forward to forever. 

 

VII.

 

“jeremy, are you all packed?” his mom asks, scooping eggs onto his plate.

 

“ _ oui _ ,” he says, because he uses thoroughly the words he knows. “but i won’t really be needing anything in my suitcase.”

 

his mom laughs. “no dear, you won’t. we’ll buy you new clothes when we get back home.”

 

“you don’t need to do that, mom, i’m not going back with you.”

 

“yes, you are. aunt matilda isn’t going to keep you— she has two children of her own, no time for another.”

 

jeremy shakes his head. “i’m not staying with her either— though i might be able to visit her once in a while.”

 

“what are you trying to say?” his mom asks, voice like winter knives. jeremy isn’t fond of anything so sharp, so he turns to his younger brothers instead.

 

_ “te quiero, _ ” he says. “i hope i can visit you guys too, i’m gonna miss you a lot.”

 

“it’s okay  _ hermano _ .” javier hugs him, isaiah and michael following suit. “we love you too.”

 

jeremy wipes his wet eyes and runs off to find his father and sister, leaving olivia in the kitchen, blindsided.

 

maria is in her room, face buried in her pillows, and jeremy knows better than to wake her. he gives her a quick kiss on the top of her head and whispers his goodbyes.

 

his father, on the other hand, is in the hallway with his wife. volumes are raised beyond what jeremy considers conversational, the kind of noise that shakes the ground and vibrates up through the floorboards.

 

“mia needs to wake the fuck up!” olivia yells. “first it’s the tree hugging, then it’s the jeremy thing, and now it’s running away? i’m not putting up with this.”

 

“let me talk to him!” his father returns. “just fucking.. let me talk to our son.”

 

“he’s not our son!”

 

“well he’s not our fucking daughter, no matter how much you want to pretend he is. he’s jeremy knox until he changes his own goddamned mind about it, you hear?”

 

olivia knox is red like blood, and jeremy is almost surprised none has been spilled yet. still, he steps out from maria’s bedroom and into sight of his parents. 

 

“i wanted to say goodbye,” he says cautiously, well aware of the violence olivia’s eyes seem to promise.

 

“you’re not going anywhere.”

 

“i’m not,” jeremy agrees. “you are.”

 

it’s not olivia’s movements that warn him, but the way his father’s face goes from heavy to horrified. 

 

“olivia!“ he screams, but she’s already bringing her hand down, and jeremy barely has any time to react before it hits him.

 

the wind does.

 

he’s away before he realizes it, up and out the nearest open window. jeremy thinks auntie m’s house is odd that way, not having bugscreens to protect them from the outdoors, but it’s more useful than anything now.

 

olivia is left standing alone with his father, marveling at the empty space where her eldest son used to be.

 

it’s the last she sees of him.

 

VIII.

 

“you’re early,” jean says, watching jeremy float down onto the sand.

 

“a little.” jeremy shrugs. “forever isn’t gonna wait that long.”

 

jean nods, moving a few feet back from jeremy, away from the rocks and into deeper waters. jeremy swallows around anxiety that bubbles up under his skin and prays it he won’t explode with all that’s built up inside of him.

 

then, just as gracefully as the first time, he lets the waves carry him into the ocean, and lets the clock of eternity start ticking. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hope u liked it!!!!


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